Adobe won’t be exhibiting at this month’s Macworld Expo in New York, officially attributing the economic slowdown as the reason.
However, sources claim that the real reason has more to do with tension between Adobe and Apple over the development of Mac OS X versions of Adobe products, according to MacUser UK . And Adobe’s finances are much healthier than most other tech firms. Adobe achieved revenue of US $344.1 million, compared to $300.1 million reported for the second quarter of fiscal 2000 and $329 million reported in the first quarter of fiscal 2001. This represents a 15 percent year-over-year revenue growth, with application revenue growth of 19 percent.
MacUser quotes an unidentified Adobe account executive as saying, “It’s easy to say it’s down to economics. But when you look at the financial numbers, that excuse won’t hold water. If you don’t have new products and you have no Carbonized products to show, then why exhibit? That’s the real reason why they decided not to exhibit.”
Sources told MacUser that the lack of news regarding Mac OS X-ready versions of Adobe products, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, was because of disagreements between Apple and Adobe concerning the stability and performance of Apple’s latest operating system and its APIs.
“Sources have confirmed that the APIs were not stable enough for Adobe’s requirements, and are not living up to Apple’s assurances in terms of performance and ease of use,” MacUser said. “Sources have confirmed that, in the meantime, development work on Carbonized applications has slowed to a crawl.”
Adobe is still officially committed to Mac OS X. A Carbonized beta of the InDesign design application was demoed in May at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference.
“Future releases of our products will support OS X natively and we will communicate updates to customers, partners and press,’ Cheryl Edwards, Adobe’s public relations director, told MacUser. However, she wouldn’t comment on when Carbonized products would be released.
Macworld New York will run July 17-20 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Visit the expo Web site for details.
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